Falling Asleep in the Skid: Reflections on France Part VI

So for all the movement, the wheels still skid, the resistance to waking up is still strong, the paralysis in action still powerful.

On my last night in Paris, I go out with a couple of my friends from when I went to Ecole Normale Supérieure back in the early 70’s. One is Jewish, the other not. The Gaulois is one of the most intelligent, thoughtful, and good-hearted people I know… himself from an immigrant (father from Italy), and a sterling example of what the French “melting pot” is capable of producing, including honest patriotism. He is neither anti-American, nor as far as I know, hostile to Israel (although that’s not a topic we’ve discussed at length).

He is also open to thinking about Judaism without a zero-sum agenda, and hence, strongly aware of what Jews have contributed to French (and more broadly modern) culture, especially over the last two generations, since the Holocaust. He talks enthusiastically about “believing without belief,” a kind of zen, or post-modern religiosity which he thought might offer a way to re-infuse disenchanted moderns with religious nourishment, a phenomenon he finds particularly strong among Jews. He has no problem eating dinner in a kosher restaurant, and doesn’t make nervous jokes about being taken for a Mossad agent.

I try to talk to him about the danger I see the French in (as I have at some point in every other conversation we’ve had since 2003). He’s not interested. Our Jewish normalien friend, knows the people at the table next to us, two couples in their sixties. He introduces us to them and we exchange pleasantries. Without rehearsal, I ask them what their impression of the current situation (no need to specify). One works in a public school, and responds as if on cue:

The Jews are leaving, especially the young. In the suburbs it’s become intolerable; even in the cities, in comfortable neighborhoods it’s very difficult. The expression “sale juif” [dirty Jew] is common in public, in the market places. People even call Chinese “sale juif” to insult them. The non-Jews don’t know what’s going on and don’t seem to care.

My friend’s response to this news:

There is no anti-Semitism in France. Look at the demonstrations for Ilan Halimi. [My Jewish friends tell me that aside from the politicians, the crowd was almost entirely Jewish.] The problem with the banlieu [suburbs] is a matter of socio-economic disparities, not a culture-clash. The Danes never should have published the cartoons: No good can come from gratuitously offending another religious sensibility. We need to open ourselves up, not shut down communication.

I try to respond and he cuts me off.

I can’t take the discussions of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The situation is too complicated, too difficult. And both sides grind you up in their handmills — moulinette bleu, moulinette rouge — it’s exhausting.

I don’t have the heart to disagree with so many statements. He looks tired. I let it slide. We speak of meeting other people at our next encounter. We shall see.
Later he writes me on the cartoons:

On n’apporte jamais rien de bon en heurtant la sensibilité de gens qui croient et sont de bonne foi, sinon renforcer la haine, l’incompréhensoin réciproques, alors qu’il faudrait au contraire aider l’autre à s’ouvrir à l’autre (belle formule ! je la ressortirai) – ce qui commence par témoigner du respect à l’égard de ses propres croyances. (email March 12, 2006)
[One gains nothing from offending the sensibilities of people who believe, people of good faith, except to reinforce hatred, mutual incomprehension, when one should sooner help the other open to the other – which begins to bear witness to a respect for the other, in terms of his own beliefs.]

If you want to help the Muslims “open themselves to respect for others,” then denouncing the Danish cartoons without touching on the poisonous state of Muslim media, without using it as a critical teaching moment, does not strike me as wise. If the French want to teach their Muslim immigrants about Republican values, they should use their Jews as the key: learning to tolerate and respect the Jews could be the key to successful adaption to modern social conditions. After all some of the Muslim immigrants from North Africa share neighborhoods in the banlieu with the Jews precisely because when they first came to France, they moved into neighborhoods with their fellow countrymen. And there are still Arab Muslims in these neighborhoods who see the loss of the Jews as a tragedy… act I in the takeover by Islamist mafias and their punk wiseguys.

Instead, by retreating hastily before the aggressive demands of Islamic “sensibilities,” and passing over in silence the problem with the Jews, the French merely speed the process of brutalization that they so fear. Throwing a child-sacrifice (Israel) and an ancestor-sacrifice (the Jews) into the voracious maw of hatred does not seem the wisest move.

The language here is reminiscent of my medieval colleagues dismissing things they don’t want to think about. Very French in its sweeping assertions– “there is no continuity” — and its logic of silence — “it is therefore forbidden to speak.”

More language of dismissal, familiar from my medievalist colleagues (ce prétendu millénarisme), here linked to warning. To insist on that which has been dismissed is to risk making things worse, inflaming the situation. Those who do not heed the warning are boors and bores, and to keep the conversation amicable, will get marginalized along with their topic.

I see a category error at work here between polite and civil. Polite conversation avoids certain topics lest there be violence; civil conversation tackles the hard topics without violence. And in my mind, the Jewish problem in France is a worthy — one might even say critical — topic for discussion.

The author of the lines above is not remotely anti-Semitic, even anti-Judaic. If he misreads the situation, he does so not because he himself needs to view the Jews as a moral failure in order to feel good about himself. But he is surrounded by people who do. Like UN Secretary General Kofi Anan’s completely unself-conscious remark after the Jenin “massacre” – is it possible that the whole world is wrong and Israel is right? – he lives in a world where such a question is not an April Fool’s joke.

And so, the spell of language continues to protect the French ego, to block the painful discussions, to satisfactorily resolve the issues by forbidding certain topics at the risk of inflaming the conflict. As one of the “talking heads” rebuked Alain Finkielkraut when he had the nerve to identify the Muslim dimension of the “November (Ramadan) 2005 riots”, “When a society is in crisis, an intellectual like you, Alain Finkielkraut, is supposed to be above the fray and exert a calming influence.” The public intellos demand valium, how dare you prescribe reality testing!

I guess, if you wake up at the wheel while in a skid, you can’t find the breaks, you are forbidden to look for them, your easiest way out (Muslims! learn to live with and respect the Jews) drives your passengers into paroxysms of derision, it makes sense to go back asleep.

There’s an old joke about two partners destroyed by the Wall Street crash of 1929. One of them commits suicide by jumping out the 70th floor building. On his way down, he sees into their rival’s office and shouts back to his partner, “Cut velveeeeeeet.” If the French don’t wake up in time, and their car, Thelma and Louise-like, plunges off the cliff of democratic culture, will they be kind enough to tell us what they see on their way down? Or will we be too close behind to do anything about it?

Next: Diagnosis and Prescription: Anti-Zionism as Cultural AIDS and its Cures: Reflections on France Part VII

3 Responses to Falling Asleep in the Skid: Reflections on France Part VI

I take it your philosophical friend is of the elite? Do you think there might be a simpler and more brutal explanation for his way of thinking, namely, the desire to stay at the top of the heap at any cost? He wouldn’t be the first opportunist to bow to the rising sun, or should I say, the rising crescent?

He’s definitely part of the elite (Normale Sup is the top — I never would have gotten in had I been French), but I don’t think this is opportunism. I don’t think that that he’s “just” protecting his position, although anyone in a position of privilege necessarily protects it. But he’s definitely not the type to stay on top at any cost. He’s actually something of a maverich. The problem as I see it is not venal self-protection, but honest self-deception. In my next post, I have some reflections on the importance of feeling moral, even at the cost of self destruction.

[translation RL: I don’t want to come to the defense of gallican friend from EN, but a large portion of the French and Europeans in general don’t understand what’s happened to them. In 30 years millions upn millions of immigrants have arrived on their continent without the people really wanting it, without being asked if they agreed with this policy, and many among them refuse to admit that anything has changed.How was it possible, against the profound conviction of the great majority of Europeans, to imposse such a transsformtion on their conditions of life, such a massive modification of the anthropological structre of an entire continent. So to admit that there’s antisemitism in France is to admit that a giant social swindle that has taken place over the last three decades, and which the intellectual elites did nothing to stop.]

Holocaust Guilt vs. Holocaust Shame: On the Crisis of Western Civilization This is a longer version of what appeared in the Tablet. Richard Landes, Jerusalem @richard_landes [email protected]Read More »